Afghanistan is currently facing one of its most difficult, critical, and uncertain periods in history, which requires more wisdom, action, faith, and authority. If this is not done, the future will be even darker, more painful, and more fatal. The Taliban have brought the country back to the Stone Age, denying citizens of their rights, silencing their voices, and turning them into powerless subjects. This has placed Afghanistan on the brink of global terrorism. The country is like a fire under the ashes, and the Taliban‘s flame of anger and hatred could spread and destroy it at any moment. Poverty, hunger, repression, censorship, suffocation, and interrogation are rampant, and Afghanistan is becoming a victim of Taliban extremism. Women and girls are being excluded from social life and having their hopes and dreams crushed by the Taliban‘s arrogant policies and ideologies. Girls are being forced to marry aged men, especially Taliban members, and become their third or fourth wives. Former security forces are being shot and stoned in desert courts in broad daylight. Instead of unifying and mobilizing everyone, the Taliban’s opponents are more divided than ever, giving the Taliban and other dogmatic, terrorist, and murderous groups such as al–Qaeda more power.
If the anti–Taliban do not put an end to their mourning for the dead and do not come together to fight the Taliban as a collective, they will hasten the decline of their political life. This will make the judgement of history more dangerous and oppressive. Recently, several former jihadist leaders and senior officials of the former government attended a meeting to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the death of commander Khair Mohammad Khairkhah, one of the commanders of the resistance front in Andrabha, and called for a joint resistance against the Taliban. The repeated statements of these political figures and jihadi leaders demonstrate that they recognize the differences between their past and present, and even called for a false coalition against the Taliban. It appears that there is a deep division in the anti–Taliban camp, and this group is taking advantage of the existing differences.
Most of these former officials have spoken words that show they are still uncertain. After the Taliban‘s collapse and humiliation of Afghanistan, it was expected that these forces would learn from the past two decades and come up with a new plan for post–Taliban Afghanistan. However, it appears that each of them wants to be the leader of the resistance against the Taliban, even going so far as to belittle the leader of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan by calling him ‘nephew‘. They are not standing with the leadership of Ahmad Massoud against the Taliban, and none of them are wearing combat uniforms. This is because they have grown old and reached a level of prosperity that they do not want to give up in order to fight against the Taliban. Their children also lack the courage to fight, and instead show leadership roles in the virtual world, but do not have a reason to stand and unite to fight in reality.
Most of the politicians who oppose the Taliban do not have a clear understanding of the political system or the power dynamics in a post–Taliban era. Instead of bringing stability, development, and strengthening governance, their division of power has only deepened ethnic and social divides, leading the country to a dead end and the re–establishment of the Taliban regime. The experience of the past year and a half has shown that without a clear worldview and understanding of power and politics in the country, the anti–Taliban political forces cannot unite against the Taliban until they embrace the wisdom of rationalism, freedom, and equality. With the current formulations, none of the political groups can attract enough social and political support to fight the Taliban and meet their social, political, and economic demands. Now is the time to distinguish between Ghani‘s dictatorship and Hibatullah Akhundzada‘s dictatorship, as politicians who do not define the type and level of confrontation with the power and the nature of the future political system will not have a clear direction in the fight against the Taliban.
